Wow! The image below has been circulating like a wild fire in So. California. I saw it over at Goddess's place (she's in my links!) and also received two higher resolution versions from the Katlady and my brother all within hours. I am truly smitten with this image and not in the least offended that I was a 'must copy' on it. It doesn't look like a photo-shop wonder either but a genuine 3D project since it incorporates our beloved shipping containers (I'll do a post just on that some day, too). There was an eccentric structural genius at work here. Better still, the designer has displayed a certain defiance and disdain of decorum acceptable to even middle class society. In other words, I am absolutely in LOVE with it. Given the chance to tour a Guggenheim exhibit or this place, you know what my choice would be. Can't you just see this arrangement creeping up the back wall of our mesa behind the Rat? Don't kid yourself, the Anasazi would have done the same thing at Mesa Verde if they had access to cheap rat trailers, shipping containers, scrap iron, cranes and welding equipment.
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.This got me to thinking about our delayed Rat Town project again. The thaw and the muddy state of the roads have postponed the delivery of our two 14'x36' buildings indefinitely and I won't say that the delay has not discouraged me somewhat. My antidote is to dream on, as it always has been. I have forever created complex micro worlds in the process of waiting on promises and prospects, most of which never materialized. It eventually became the creative thought process which mattered most; a realized, completed project became almost anticlimactic after a few decades of dreams lost.
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And so I dredged up a front-on view of the Rat (above) to impose my imagination upon, the two new buildings already in place in my visions. Not two overgrown and glorified potting sheds but two edifices to meld into my eccentric and whimsical 'big picture'. Yes, a very curious outpost in the middle of no man's land, something that will make the rare lost traveler grin and wonder. .
It took considerable time to browse the Net for inspiration but I finally found some images which I could electronically beat into submission to form my otherwise very loose master plan (above). Since Slim and cowboy company liked the idea of an Old West Saloon, this was the grit around which my outrageous pearl would form. The new buildings will stack up at a right angle to the Rat's front facade to form one continuous road face. We did not resurface the front face of the Rat and will not until we see where this wild hair of a plan is going. Ideally, the road-facing side of each new building will sport two or more distinct pseudo store fronts . What you see above is strictly a concept, much the way concept cars never meet the road in production numbers but it gives you a very rough idea at least.
It was an idea fermenting well before our arrival and, unfortunately, the many wonderful antique architectural details that I had been scrounging up in the Midwest were left behind thanks to the nature of those people to take advantage of our time and logistics predicament (oh no, no residual animosity, of course, but may they drown and then rot in Hell, the whole bloody lot of them). You just don't mess with my dreams.
What items we were able to salvage will not produce the vignette above but it is a start at least. It will be many, many years before we can find more architectural touches to complete a whimsical Old Western facade to our liking but the quest will keep me invigorated and inclined to venture into civilization more than once a year. The thrill, the lust of the hunt has not been officially abandoned yet.
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